Getting out of Tokyo

On Thursday we decided we would get out of Tokyo and see some of the countryside, plus I wanted to have a go on the Shinkansen. So we decided to head north to the small tourist town of Nikko.

We organised the Shinkansen tickets and plunged into Tokyo Train Station to find our platform. Like I said before there are a lot of rules in Japan but once you understand the basics of how things work it kinda all makes sense - YouTube was a big help here! The Shinkansens are huge trains, some are 12 carriages long,some are double deckers, and they run to various locations every few minutes so you need to be organised and know the name of the Shinkansen route, the platform it leaves from, your carriage number, and the time it goes.

The JR gate officers are very helpful and used to directing lost tourists so they pointed us to the right platform where we knew we would have to line up. The platform has lines marked out called 'First' and 'Second' this refers to the order of the trains leaving not the class so if your train is next you line up in the First section if the one after then the Second section and you move to the First when their train leaves.

When the train pulls in and the people have exited the cleaners go through to turn the seats around, get rid of any rubbish (never much), and make sure all is clean again. Once they are done they get off the train and bow before moving off to their next assignment. They are very fast and very efficient.

Our JR Pass gives us unlimited access to JR Shinkansens and local trains. We were advised to buy the slightly more expensive Green version of the JR Pass as Green Shinkansen carriages have better seats and you can reserve seats whereas other carriages it is first on first seated.

We found our seats and settled in for the ride. While it was in the 'burbs of Tokyo it wasn't going that fast - mind you it would have left the all stations to Revesby on the East Hills line in its dust! Once out of Tokyo it really started to move and wow it is fast. We had to change at Utsonomaya to a smaller local line to go up to Nikko. This train had a lot of Westerners - well about 15% were non-Japanese the rest were locals. It was a pleasant journey up into the hills to get to Nikko, all up it took just under 2 hours.

Nikko is north of Tokyo and is viewed by many locals as a nice day trip, kinda like Sydney people going to Berry in NSW. The station was a classic old style and there were loads of people around. Nikko is popular because one of the original Shoguns is buried here so there are some very old bridges, temples, pagodas, and other buildings. We caught a bus up the top of the hill (along with a couple of hundred locals that were jammed in with us - real crush loading) and had a look around. We came across the red bridge in the photos below, really impressive. Then we wandered up to the main temple Rinno-ji (Buddist). Unfortunately the centuries and earthquakes have taken their toll and so the temple is in the middle of being restored. It has a big shed built over it and they have literally pulled it apart and replaced or repaired anything that needed to be. The best part is that this whole area is known for its cedar trees which these buildings are all built from so the smell of the cedar was sensational.

We also visited the Japanese garden and generally wandered around with everyone else - see photos below.

We then wandered back down the hill to look at Nikko itself. We wanted to find something for lunch but it is always a bit of a gamble as you aren't sure what type of restaurant you are going to walk into - we ended up having cake and coffee at a really neat little coffee shop but we really wanted some lunch!

Anyway we finally sorted that out and after wandering around a bit more headed back to the station for the trip home.

Nikko is well out of the City so we went through what we would call farmland. The Japanese are very good at using every possible speck of space. Their houses are usually double story and on small blocks, their cars are usually very small (Margaret's Yaris woud be considered a mid-sized car here), their streets are very narrow, their yards either don't exist or are used to grow veggies, and on a farm all possible space seems to be used to grow rice.

Dinner was a low key affair followed by packing as we leave Tokyo tomorrow.

Our hotel in Ginza was the Unitzo Ginza Hotel. The room was typically Japanese - very neat, very clean and very small. In all seriousness if you put 2 double beds in the room (it already had one) then you would have completely filled the room. As it was the room had a bed, TV on the wall, small desk, chair for the desk, small table, an ottoman, upright ironing press thing, and a document shredder (as you do). We had to pile some of these things up to give us room to open our cases and move about. The bathroom was similarly small but functional.

Which brings me to an interesting topic, Japanese toilets. There are a couple of different types: the squat type and the western style. While the Japanese squat style are common there is usually at least one Western version as well. Even the western style can be rather odd, the one in our room beeped when in use and had a flush button as usual but it also had a remote control. Neither of us were game to try this out for fear of causing some form of biological or mechanical plumbing incident, not sure our travel insurance would cover us for any injuries. A photo is below.

Tomorrow we move on to Kyoto.Read more